1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to catheters for the conduction of fluids to and from internal bodily organs, and more particularly, to a catheter which is loaded or impregnated with an anti-inflammatory agent to obviate or abate the human foreign-body response to the implanted catheter.
2. Description of the Related Art
Catheters have long found innumerable applications in a wide variety of medical procedures, including both therapeutic and diagnostic procedures. Catheters are eminently useful, for example, as passageways for delivery of fluids to the patient and removal of fluids from the patient. They are thus routinely employed to conduct fluids containing medicaments from a source thereof directly to the tissue of an internal organ. Such catheters may be placed in the parenchyma of an organ such as the brain or pancreas for direct delivery of medicaments to the parenchyma, usually by way of a bore formed in the tissue of the parenchyma by incision, perforation or puncture.
The human body spontaneously rejects or encapsulates a foreign body which has been introduced into the body or a specific bodily organ. Such phenomena in connection with implants are described with particularity in U.S. Pat. No. 5,219,361, issued Jun. 15, 1993 to A. F. von Recum et al. In some cases, encapsulation will impede or halt infusion through blockage of the catheter. In essence, the body's own natural defense systems frustrate the potentially beneficial procedure of directly removing or supplying fluid to the tissue.